Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the first Build 33 IWBUMS public test has begun! To participate the please read the contents of this forum post very closely indeed.
This is a public test, and there will be almost certainly be bugs and peculiarities in the build as we expose it to a wider audience. To help us keep up, then, you’ll find that our bug tracker lives here.
We especially need difficulty and balancing feedback from this release, as it’s the first outing for our revamped New Game scenario and difficulty list. On top of that, please keep an eye out for spelling and grammar mistakes in the new TV and radio broadcasts – providing screenshots of erroneous lines of dialogue where possible.
The top line is: new FMOD sound system and music integration, furniture movement, herbalist trait, full MP radio broadcast system and multi-channel narrative content on both TV and radio, randomised house and item house condition as you explore and an improved MP server selection screen. Amidst other cool stuff.
There’s also a fair bit more to be dropped into the build when we’re a few versions down the line, alongside Creative Mode, that still needs a bit of polish and/or player feedback on the systems they build on. So we’re talking stuff like FMOD balancing and its impact on far/distant noise like thunder, the ability to move multi-tile items in the new furniture movement system, the ability to record/playback on in-world devices… all that fun stuff.
Anyway, here you are. Have fun!
Changelist: The official changelist for the Build 33 Public IWBUMS test can also be found here,
Bear in mind that not everything is done yet, still poking fmod and difficulty probably need balancing. This build does not contain Creative, which will drop into a future IWBUMS before 33's release.
I'm also aware of some bugs, I'll prob try to do a new version tomorrow with fixes.
When you post a problem with sound balancing, please say if you're on headphones or not, so I can balance them more easily, thanks! 
There will be no dedicated server today, we need to fix a few problems before we can upload it. For now it's a single player only, we'll look to patch it in the next few days.
So, what's up?
- FMOD: New sound engine! (more info on FMOD here)
- Tons of new sounds and ambient! (fridge buzz, water drip, birds...)
- New random music algorythm: some weird music will start at night to give a creepy ambient!
- Proper 3D sound!
- Added an ambient volume slider in the option.
- New randomized buildings:
- Some buildings will now be burnt, looted or already barricaded.
- Some will have specific professions loots
- Made world more alive, some windows/inside door will be open.
- New main menu!
- Allowing to custom your difficulty settings easier.
- You can choose a difficulty for the world/zombie and then for your starter/character. (need more balancing)
- Choose from "The First Day" to "6 Months After the Apocalypse" (hard early game), and don't forget our hardcore Survival (hard late game!)
- Then select if your character will start with some bonuses, such as items or xp multiplier!
- Radio/TV from Turbo and Will! (I'm sure they'll write more here soon
) - Also from Turbo: moveable furnitures!
- New trait: herbalist
- With this trait you can find medicinal herbs by foraging.
- They'll help you fixing your broken bones, your stomach disease, etc.
- Some will require to be transformed in poultice with a mortar and a pilon!
- Now each new game a random berry/mushroom (yay mushroom!) will be poisonous, same for multiplayer and only the herbalist will know which one you shouldn't eat. Not a herbalist? Take care when eating berries
- Few more stuff including bug fixing (such as crafting UI crash...), more info there tomorrow as I'm finishing another build...
- Balanced zombies grouping a bit, start game should be way more easier (no zombies thumping at your door when you spawn, less zombies around you, etc...)
23/11 Monday Fix:
Hello survivors! A bit of a ‘getting on with it’ Mondoid this week as, as you can expect, we’re all busy bees working on the latest IWBUMS.
IWBUMS 33.2
In case you were barricaded under a rock you’ll knoe that we’re currently in the midst of a test of a (still incomplete) build 33 on our I Will Backup My Save branch, and as expected work continues on both fixing up what is currently in the IWBUMS branch, with Will working on getting the initial infection TV and Radio into the game, as well as bug fixing those pesky typos and other bugs. Turbo is fixing up the issues that have been reported with the furniture moving system. Meanwhile RJ has been continuing with the sound system fixes. Here’s a few words from RJ himself on his build 33 stuff:
“Build 33 is on his way on our IWBUMS branch, we released a patch already so we’re on 33.1! Bugs still exist, but it’s mostly balancing the new sound engine and difficulty.
Some report that Survival is way too hard, still need to know if it’s REALLY too hard or it’s just people having bad luck or not skilled enough to play Survival (which is meant to be hardcore :D), but for those people, the normal mode should be ok!
So this is a hard piece to balance, but it’s progressing!
About sound, it’s the same, I balanced them a lot, made the reverb better outside, but still need to work on it so it doesn’t feel like your under a big metal dome!
Annnnd I also hear you “what about Steam Server update!” Well, I’m on it too, I fixed some bugs for multiplayer caused by the new sound engine, and I’m trying to get that steam server working, it’ll be probably for this week, maybe tomorrow with some luck!
In the meantime I may release another patch with bug fixes/balance, it’ll depend how well the Steam Server bugs are progressing…
So it’s getting there, build looks pretty solid so far and I think we’ll have bug fixed rather soon for a public release!”
CREATIVE
We’ve still got a bit of finishing off to do on the new Creative Mode systems. The latest addition was a virtual object system which allows for tbx, tmx or clippings, as well as road segments, instead of being placed permanently within squares on the map, instead to be made into virtual objects which are placed on the map, but do not destroy the tiles they are placed on, only override them while the object exists in that place. This means they will remain an moveable object you can drag around without permanently distubing what goes underneath.
The original reason for this feature was to make the creation of road networks much easier, as it opens up the ability to have simple nodes that connect to eachother, and to form the actual tiles of the road and pavement virtually, calculated over the top of the base game map data. These can then be tweaked and changed as the map is expanded without having to clear out areas of the map. There would be of course a performance hit incurred due to lots of these virtual objects, so at some point these will need to be turned into permanent things on the map, and how that happens has yet to be decided. Either players / servers will have the option of committing these elements permanently to the map once the creators are satisfied with them, or maybe when the player runs sufficiently away from the object so that it streams out, it’s not clear which is the best option for simplicity / performance.
The roads are the pretty much last thing to get right, apart from a few fixes for making sure everything works on multiplayer, before Creative could be added to the IWBUMs.
